EXQUISITE SEX(ES) WITHOUT TOP (OR) BOTTOM: SURREALIST EROTICISM
I did not want to speak today, and I am doing so simply out of friendship for your study group. Indeed, I have already been asked to give a lecture on "eroticism in surrealism" in June, at a conference in Tenerife, and I did not feel disposed to speak twice in a row about the same thing. But I understood that you wanted to have the point of view of a dinosaur of surrealism... Since I am one of the last remaining, I will give you some general reflections on the subject that brings us together.
In examining your program, I notice that something is missing. You have chosen to treat "surrealist eroticism" by focusing on two women, remarkable ones I admit, and on a painter, also very significant. But you cannot hope, from these three cases, to determine "surrealist eroticism" as a whole; you also cannot situate each of them in the collective experience of surrealism. Claude Cahun, before the war, expressed herself in a different theoretical atmosphere than Joyce Mansour, after the war. To properly appreciate "surrealist eroticism," one must first know its history. Fundamentally, this consists of clarifying these questions: who, in surrealism, spoke of eroticism? When and how was it spoken of? What influence did works of this genre have on the evolution of the movement? That is what I will try to tell you in a quarter of an hour, for it suffices to highlight the strong points of this activity.
I begin with a paradox. Eroticism was not a value claimed by surrealism at its beginnings. The proof: until the end of the Second World War, the word eroticism appears only four times in surrealist writings. If a fifth or sixth time has escaped me, it is not in the official texts. Four times: in analyzing them before you, I am certain to make you understand that this notion was acquired little by little, instead of being a founding notion.
The first time was in July 1923—therefore a year before the founding of surrealism—when Robert Desnos was commissioned by the couturier Jacques Doucet to draw up a purchasing plan to constitute an erotic library. Desnos established this list for him in a short memorandum that he entitled De l'érotisme dans ses manifestations écrites et du point de vue de l'esprit moderne. The title, in itself, is a manifesto, since it makes eroticism an expression of the modern spirit. In truth, Desnos's insights on erotic literature are weak; he drew his knowledge from Apollinaire's articles, but unlike Apollinaire, he did not study the books of the Enfer of the Bibliothèque Nationale. What is most interesting are his first pages. Desnos is indignant at the definition in the Petit Larousse: "Érotisme, medical term. - Sickly love." He opposes his own definition: according to him, eroticism is everything that provokes and exalts love. He specifies that eroticism in literature is only an approximation: a writer only has merit if he creates an erotics, that is, a science of amorous pleasure. Finally, Desnos makes the necessary distinctions by also defining obscenity, pornography, and scatology.
All this is very good, but had only one reader: Jacques Doucet himself. The memorandum remained buried in his archives, along with Desnos's other work for him. Desnos's friends did not read it—all the more so since he wrote it in August 1923 in Paris, when they were on vacation: Aragon at his uncle's in Commercy, Breton at his parents' in Lorient. In September, Desnos counted this memorandum on eroticism among his bread-and-butter writings that he forgot after doing them. I have not seen in his complete works that he referred to it subsequently, not even when he published La liberté ou l'amour, which corresponds to his principles.
After the Manifesto of Surrealism in 1924, and during the years of La Révolution surréaliste, the word eroticism appears nowhere. And yet, Aragon publishes under the counter Le Con d'Irène; but he does not consider it an erotic novel. It is the part he keeps from the novel La Défense de l'infini that he has just destroyed, which aimed to describe society as a vast brothel. At this time, Aragon also writes the preface to Apollinaire's Les Onze mille verges, saying: "I do not consider this book as an erotic book, a bad expression... It is a game... where all of Apollinaire's skill and his knowledge of a certain troubling vulgarity, the best expression of which is the postcard, come to light." The same year as Le Con d'Irène, in 1928, Benjamin Péret wants to publish Les Couilles enragées, with a frontispiece by Yves Tanguy; but the printed proofs of the book are seized by the police, and Les Couilles enragées, become Les Rouilles encagées, will be published by Éric Losfeld in 1954. Now Benjamin Péret did not want to make an erotic novel with Les Couilles enragées: he applied automatic writing to obscenity, which he judged more subversive.
We have an explanation for the absence of the word eroticism at this time in issue 11 of La Révolution surréaliste, in December 1928, where two interviews from the Recherches sur la sexualité are published. You remember that in these interviews Breton, Queneau, Prévert, Péret, Tanguy, and many others discuss masturbation, sexual relations, orgasm, and perversions with complete freedom. And this is not entitled Recherches sur l'érotisme, but Recherches sur la sexualité. There is the key to the mystery. The new word, the strong word at the beginning of surrealism, is sexuality, which comes from psychoanalysis, and even caused a scandal when Freud published his Three Essays on a theory of sexuality. Romantic and symbolist poets did not speak of sexuality; surrealist poets are conscious of surpassing them by speaking of it. When Maurice Heine, in 1931, edited Sade's Les 120 journées de Sodome from the manuscript belonging to the vicomte de Noailles, he does not speak of eroticism but of sexuality in connection with it. He even makes Sade the precursor of sexology.
The second time the word eroticism appears is in December 1931, in the journal Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution, where René Char invokes "the statutes of eroticism" (the statutes, that is, the laws governing an association). In his text L'Esprit poétique, he repeats this expression four times as a leitmotiv, accompanying it each time with suggestive formulas. "The statutes of eroticism. Teach me to kill, I will teach you to enjoy. - The statutes of eroticism. - The long silent walks for two, at night, through the deserted countryside, in the company of the somnambulist panther, terror of masons." etc.
However, this superb text by René Char had no other influence than to teach the word eroticism to Salvador Dali, who, in this same issue, invites the surrealists to make "objects with symbolic functioning," realizing, according to his terms, "clearly characterized erotic fantasies and desires." But it is only in issue 5 of the journal, in May 1933, that Salvador Dali writes the word eroticism, in his article on Psycho-atmospheric-anamorphic Objects, which is of great buffoonery, since he speaks there of "object cannibalism" (the perverse desire one has to eat certain objects). Dali writes: "The surrealist object, we have seen it, from its beginnings, act and become, under the sign of eroticism, and just as it is with the love object, after having wanted to activate it, we wanted to eat it." For Dali, the notion of eroticism is linked to the fabrication of objects, like his Aphrodisiac Vest, a vest to which he attached peppermint vials. He will not speak of eroticism in his articles in Minotaure, such as the one on "spectral sex-appeal."
André Breton, in L'Amour fou, in 1937, does not yet speak of eroticism, although he makes a lyrical praise of desire there. He limits himself to invoking "veiled-erotic," not as an excitant to love, but as a condition of "convulsive beauty." The fourth time eroticism is named aloud will be decisive: it is in January 1938, on the occasion of the International Exhibition of Surrealism in Paris, Galerie des Beaux-Arts. The catalog is an Abridged Dictionary of Surrealism, written by André Breton and Paul Éluard; the manuscript shows that two-thirds are in Breton's hand, the other third in Éluard"s. The two poets have gathered there all the words that are essential for surrealism, and have defined them by citations drawn from surrealist texts. When citations are lacking, they use the game of questions and answers. In this two-player game, one of the players notes a question in a notebook, and his partner notes the answer in another, without knowing this question. In 1928, Suzanne Muzard asked: "What is the moon?" and André Breton, without knowing what she was asking, answered: "It is a marvelous glazier." In 1934, Breton asks Giacometti: "What is art?" and Giacometti answers at random: "It is a white shell in a basin of water." That is why, in the Dictionary, under the word MOON, this definition is given: "Marvelous glazier" and under the word ART: "White shell in a basin of water."
Other definitions will come from this game: "Temptation: Flowering apple tree that repeats itself infinitely"; "Rape: Love of speed." It was believed that "Rape, love of speed' was a voluntary witticism. No, it is an involuntary image due to chance. A proverb says that chance does things well. For the surrealists, chance writes things well.
Thus, in the Abridged Dictionary of Surrealism, we read: "Érotisme: Sumptuous ceremony in an underground." Fourteen years after the founding of surrealism, eroticism is inscribed among its fundamental values. And an admirable definition is given of it, all the more so since it is not concerted, since it comes from the game of questions and answers, as if it were an oracle rendered by destiny.
During the Second World War, there will be no recourse to eroticism, neither in theory nor in literary and artistic practice, no more among the surrealists of the journal VVV in New York than among those of la Main à Plume in Paris. But in Arcane 17, André Breton exposes his conception of the woman-child, which corresponds to an erotics, in the sense that Desnos understood it. It is love that must be put above everything, says Breton, specifying: "reciprocal love, which conditions total magnetization, on which nothing can have a hold, which makes flesh sun and splendid imprint to flesh."
After the war, at the International Exhibition of Surrealism of 1947 at Maeght, Marcel Duchamp conceived for the catalog a cover made of a false woman's breast in foam rubber. He wrote from New York a letter where he said: "Have the breasts painted pink, but I reserve the nipples for myself." All the nipples were delicately colored red by Duchamp himself. This was the part of eroticism in this Exhibition, like the altar to Léonie Aubois d'Ashby that Breton composed with singular fervor.
The first time eroticism was evoked in the post-war period was in issue 1 of Néon, in January 1948. And there, I apologize for saying it, but it is a historical truth, it is I who did it in my manifesto L'Économie poétique, where I say that dialectical eroticism must be opposed to the dialectical materialism of the Marxists. The words dialectical eroticism, in large capitals, aroused the irritation of the old surrealist guard, Marcel Jean, Henri Pastoureau, who did not dare attack me because Breton had confidence in me. It was exclusively with Claude Tarnaud that I discussed dialectical eroticism, which was to be a new form of philosophical thought explaining everything by the dynamism of the sexes.
When I left the surrealist group with Victor Brauner and a few others, I did not see any allusion to eroticism in the following journals, Médium, Bief, Le Surréalisme même. On May 16, 1950, in Combat, Francis Dumont asked André Breton: "What do you expect today from esotericism?" He did not ask him: "What do you expect from eroticism?" because at that time André Breton expected nothing from it. On the contrary, he expected much from esotericism. What? I quote him: "It strikes historical materialism erected into a system of knowledge with derision."
In 1957, a dramatic turn occurs in the history of modern thought: Georges Bataille publishes his book L'Érotisme. It is a shock title, because at that time the word was extremely decried. It served to stigmatize literature that outraged good morals, as was said then, and to denounce base debauchery. I myself, who had just published my first book, and who was preparing Les Libérateurs de l'amour, was stunned by this audacity. Not only does Bataille display Érotisme on his cover, but he also ennobles it by the use he makes of it. He does not associate it with literature, but with a philosophy of sexual relations. Everything that the surrealists had formerly studied in their Recherches sur la sexualité, he now calls Érotisme. He says at the beginning of his chapter I: "Érotisme is one of the aspects of man's inner life. We are mistaken about it because it constantly seeks outside an object of desire. But this object responds to the interiority of desire." This is of overwhelming novelty, like the distinction he makes between the eroticism of bodies, the eroticism of hearts, and spiritual eroticism.
To support his action, Georges Bataille wanted to found a journal, Genèse, which he defined thus: "a journal entirely devoted to sexuality and eroticism." The editor-in-chief was to be Patrick Waldberg, a dissident surrealist; Henri Michaux and Samuel Beckett had promised their collaboration. But the publisher Maurice Girodias, charged with realizing this project, gave it up on December 6, 1958. It was then that André Breton, who declared that Bataille's book is "a sign of the times," decides to organize the International Exhibition of Surrealism of December 1959-February 1960 at Daniel Cordier's on the theme of Érotisme.
This Exhibition would never have taken place if Georges Bataille had not published L'Érotisme. Nor would Bataille's book alone have sufficed to impose eroticism as the modern value of the century, if Breton had not given it this brilliant extension. The agreement between these two men who fought each other over politics and mysticism is total on the concept of eroticism. This is a memorable fact.
André Breton prefaced the exhibition by saying: "The surrealist conception of eroticism proscribes from the outset everything that can be of the order of ribaldry." The door in the shape of a vagina, the uterine room with a palpitating pink ceiling, the corridor where sighs were heard, the Chamber of Fetishes, the room where a Cannibal Feast conceived by Meret Oppenheim took place, were realized so that the spectator would have "an organic liaison"—that was the term used—with the exhibited works. The catalog was a Succinct Lexicon of Eroticism, a collective response of the surrealists to Georges Bataille"s theories. This lexicon, evoking themes of the time—Marilyn Monroe, Lolita, the vamp, the surprise party—, erotic writers and artists to honor, is not as playful as the Abridged Dictionary of Surrealism. Certain definitions are long and even pedantic, like those of José Pierre for Étreinte and Gérard Legrand for Perversion. The definition of Poil by André Pieyre de Mandiargues is on the verge of ridicule. The best surprises come from Mimi Parent who defines Masturbation: "The hand at the service of imagination" and from Marianne van Hirtum who wrote Orgasme et Vice. André Breton gave this definition of Scabreux: "What skirts the precipice all along, narrowly avoiding it to maintain its vertigo."
From then on, the scabrous becomes the master value of surrealist eroticism. In 1961 Breton will say, about Max-Walter Svanberg"s painting: "I have always thought for my part that a certain scabrousness, circumscribed to the erotic plane, which we extol in certain dreams to the point of keeping the most cruel nostalgia for it, is all that could have given man the idea of paradises."
In the 1960s, the surrealists will openly claim eroticism, which they did not do before. They put themselves in competition with Georges Bataille, who is preparing Les larmes d"Éros, where he says: "The meaning of eroticism escapes anyone who does not see its religious meaning." Bataille wished to give a lecture at the publication of his book, where he treated "voluptuousness in tears," and wrote to Lo Duca: "Regarding this lecture, I will try to come to an understanding with André Breton." But Bataille became too ill to execute this project. The dialogue with Breton who said: "Everything is not necessarily as black as Bataille wants it to be," would have marked their affinities and their differences. Breton, at the end of his life, was a partisan of initiation in eroticism, as he said on December 10, 1964, in le Nouvel Observateur to Guy Dumur. He protests against sex education in school in these terms: "The veil has been torn away and thus profaned, for lack of the required precautions, the place where dreams are woven."
We arrive at the following observation: the evolution of surrealist eroticism was made in two movements. In the first movement, which culminated in the 1938 exhibition, love and sexuality were the object of permanent questioning, and of various attempts to exalt one by the other. In the second movement, which has as its extreme moment the 1959 exhibition, it is eroticism properly speaking that is claimed, eroticism considered as the synthesis of love and sexuality. The authors who belong to the first movement have a different tone and different principles than those of the second movement. You will see this by comparing Claude Cahun, whose Aveux non avenus are from 1930, and Joyce Mansour whose Histoires nocives are from 1973. I will not expand further on these preliminary remarks, and I leave you to appreciate the true subject of this session.
1 — Sarane Alexandrian has kindly entrusted us with the presentation he made on April 1, 2006, at the Bateau-Lavoir for a session organized by the Association for the Study of Surrealism. We thank him here for it. (Ed.) ↩